WindowsVista Home Premium is the operating system for homes with advanced computer needs. It will help you use your laptop or desktop PC more effectively as well as enable you to enjoy new, exciting digital entertainment experiences – all with the benefit ofadded security and reliability.Windows Vista Home Premium (DVD-ROM) makes finding information, staying connected, and interacting with your PC easier and more secure. Whether you use your PC for organizing and sharing photos, watching videos and TV programs, balancing your checkbook, doing homework, or listening to music, Windows Vista Home Premium makes it easy to enjoy your computing time. An ideal operating system for homes with advanced computer needs, Windows Vista Home Premium comb

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This review is from: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Full Version [DVD] – Old Version (DVD-ROM)

BACKGROUND: I have used PCs and Macs on a regular, working basis, for 12 years. I approach each platform as a tool, not a social statement. Except where gaming is concerned, computers are tools and that’s all they are. Just like a swiss army knife for the digital age. For some jobs the Windows tool has been more effective for me, for other jobs Mac OS X has been more effective. And it’s not a question of “graphics vs. business”, which is about the dumbest oversimplification in the history of modern computing. Anyone who tells you that does not use both platforms on a regular basis. If they did, they’d know both are robust in the range of jobs they can accomplish: accounting, charting, office, mainstream database work of all types (Oracle, SQL, Filemaker, etc), photographic and digital post-production, audio production and post-production, 3D modeling and animation, CAD, C/C++ programming, web development, mechanical drawing, presentations, spreadsheets, illustration… the list is ENDLESS. And almost without exception, every big name program is made not only for Mac and Windows, but many times Linux too. In short, if a person can’t get a lot of great things done on either platform, the problem is the user, not the operating system. ; )

MY TAKE ON VISTA

XP PRO USERS: IF you have a fully updated, stable install of XP Pro and your apps are running efficiently, I do *not* recommend a Vista upgrade until MS releases the first major service update, which is likely to include some security updates too. Most experienced XP Pro users will not benefit from upgrading to Vista right now unless they love to play with new software and/or are an early adopter types who can trouble-shoot most problems.

WINDOWS 95, 98, ME USERS: 1) If you are not considering the purchase of updated hardware and software soon, YOU SHOULD. : ) If you ARE considering a new computer soon, and are using a much older system this probably means you are just a casual user, dabbling with internet, word processing and other simple tasks. For this group it probably makes sense to order your new computer with Vista, and not XP installed. Vista is a much nicer system than any of the older variants, and is also much more stable and more secure than the older systems. It provides useful information to you more quickly, it’s easier on the eyes, is more capable in terms of its features, and in general is less of a PITA than these heavily outdated Windows systems.

Just be prepared to spend a good chunk of money on a fancier system than you’re used to, because you’re not going to run Vista efficiently without:
A) Lots of RAM (Gigabytes, not Megabytes)
B) Fast Processors (that’s plural, as in, more than one – and at more than 2GHz a piece preferably)
C) A very powerful video card and a big hard drive (as in, more than 400GB)

INTERFACE: to be fair, Vista *does* borrow (and I use that term loosely) A LOT from Mac OS X, which is why people say it looks nicer. It *does* look and feel more streamlined and elegant, there’s no question. All the new window transparency, sidebar widgets, streamlined glassy buttons… that was all inspired by Apple’s OS design. That’s a big part of why it took MS so long. Aside from problems making the clunky parts of XP better, MS was watching Apple update its system about every 18 months, in order cherry pick some of the best “bells and whistles” for Vista. Much easier watch Apple innovate every year, see what works, and then every so often… imitate. It’s a little shameless, but honestly it’s a good business tactic. I don’t admire MS for this, but I understand it, and that’s enough because as I say… computers are tools. Not “who we are”. Yes Mac users (the ones I’ve known anyway) are creative thinkers, trend setters and take the road less traveled… but it’s the quality of their work and their art, not their computer, that defines them IMO.

FEATURES: there *are* some new additions that make it easier to:
A) Get the information you need from online sources, without actually going online
B) Find files more quickly (once the LONG indexing process is completed – think hours, not minutes)
C) Organize files more easily, and in general get around the system more easily.
D) Work on your pictures, music, etc.

Sidebar: It’s worth noting Apple is readying a major update as well, which -among several other things- will bring full 64bit support and a feature which lets users run XP Pro or Vista inside the Mac, at full speed, with all your peripherals. In fact, if you’re willing to use a beta component, you can do that right now on any Intel-based Mac. There are even 3rd party virtualization products that will let you run Windows XP and Vista apps inside OS X (IOW, you don’t have to deal with the MS Explorer, task bar, etc – just the window and tools of your Vista application)…

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Full Version [DVD] – Old Version (DVD-ROM)

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, perhaps you can be excused for not having heard about Microsoft’s new edition to the
Windows canon. For all others, Vista has become a fact of life, whether or not you actually run the operating system yet. Check out a tech website and you’ll find a Vista screen shot somewhere, either depicting some impressive overclocking results via CPU-Z, or else simply for no other purpose than to show the world, “Yes, I can run Aero–aren’t you jealous?” In fact, it’s hard to avoid Vista these days. And, as always seems to be the case, most of what you hear is probably negative.

That’s where I come in. I’ve waited a while before writing this review, both to test the operating system and to wait for the horror stories to fade away. They haven’t. And this can only mean one thing: the positive stories aren’t getting through because most people who are satisfied with a product generally don’t feel the need to comment on it. Now of course you’ve probably seen quite a few anxious posts (most likely in all capital letters) either bashing Microsoft for everything under the sun, praising Vista indiscriminately, making it seem as though you need a $5000.00 enthusiast-class computer to run the thing, or boasting about Mac’s venerable OS X and how Windows Vista is nothing more than a bad copy thereof. Needless to say, none of these sorts of things helps, and all of them create a sense of confusion and negativity that reflects heavily on the product. And, if you analyze them closely, you’ll realize that *none of them actually says anything about Windows Vista.* If you don’t believe me, then just go visit Apple’s discussion area and check out the iPod pages. You’d get the impression that iPods were the worst products ever made and that every single one has problems. Yet, if this were the case, then why have in excess of 100 million units been sold thus far? The answer is obvious: people seem compelled to review products only if something went wrong with their experience. In short, people confuse review sites with complaint forums.

Therefore, as the self-proclaimed Dr. Prog, I feel it my duty to step out of my usual mode of reviewing progressive rock albums and give an honest, no nonsense review of Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium.

-THE INTERFACE-

Ah, yes. You’ve heard all about the new Windows Vista Aero interface by now. And virtually every screen shot you’ll ever see will feature Aero. But it’s much more than just pretty, glass-like window frames. Aero includes many new enhancements to the UI, such as the live thumbnails that appear when you mouse-over minimized windows. As the name suggests, these actually update in real time, so if there is a video or an animation playing in the window, it will appear in the live thumbnail. This is very useful. Perhaps less useful but scoring about an 8 on the 1-10 “coolness factor” scale is the oft-mentioned 3D-Flip, which allows the user to view a three-dimensional representation of all open windows, along with offering the ability to virtually paw through these to bring the desired window to the forefront. These are the things you’ll hear the most about.

What you don’t hear so much is all the general changes that have been made to the overall interface. The new icons are photo-realistic and size-scalable. They start out a little large, but you can set them to any size within a wide spectrum. The explorer windows have been radically redressed, with a new breadcrumbs backward navigation tool that beats the old address bar hands down (you can retrace your steps in a logical, step-by-step manner, instead of using the cryptic addresses). Also, they’re spruced up with decorations that recall the visual aura style of some of the new wallpapers. Speaking of which, these are for the first time actually usable, unlike in previous versions of Windows, where the wallpapers have been small and grainy.

More general changes include the absence of menu bars in most areas of Explorer, including IE. These can be replaced momentarily with a tap of the Alt key, at least until you learn how to navigate without them. Also, the animations are much better than in previous versions of Windows, particularly the one you see when copying a file. In addition, the Start menu has been reworked drastically. It doesn’t even say “Start,” anymore; instead, it’s simply a blue orb with the Windows logo. The first big change is the way programs are accessed: gone is the delicate and finicky ever-expanding hierarchy system, where a slightly overzealous hand could miss the mark and close the entire desired level. Now, the All Programs button leads to an Explorer-like listing of folders, each clearly named, and each of which opens and closes with a single mouse click. Each time the Start menu is opened, the folders reset themselves. Also, they are…

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Full Version [DVD] – Old Version (DVD-ROM)

Background: I am a computer scientist who makes his living as a software engineer and database administrator. I have significant experience with MS-DOS, Windows, Unix, and Linux. Unlike some geeks, I do not hold any particular bias for or against Microsoft.

My honest, objective opinion for now is that Vista is a waste of time and money. As far as I can tell, MS either released it in an effort to generate revenue or to obsolete its competitors software products. There’s nothing wrong with generating revenue, but Vista doesn’t bring much to the table that improves computing for users. All those billions of dollars and brilliant minds at MS and this is what they come up with? It smacks of a complacent company that is becoming the IBM they once deposed.

A few months ago I upgraded our family computer, but decided to stick with XP. This turned out to be a wise decision. About a week ago, I purchased a new HP laptop pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium. At first it seemed alright, but as I’ve worked more with it I’ve come to be quite frustrated by its quirks. As far as performance goes I don’t have any real complaints, but I haven’t tried gaming on it. The boot and shutdown times are acceptable and application performance has been good once I removed all the HP bloatware. My laptop has 1GB of RAM and for basic laptop computing it seems okay. I’d like to list some of the problems I’ve encountered as it may be instructive to someone who reads this:

1) Had trouble copying files from a Windows 2000 machine over the network to my laptop. It simply refused to copy one of my files, giving a cryptic “Destination Folder Access Denied” message. I got around this by copying the file to an external drive and then to my laptop!

2) Annoying confirmations. Vista asks you to confirm everything. I turned that “feature” off. The Apple ads are close to true on this score.

3) Had difficulty getting Linksys QuickVPN client software to work. I foolishly attempted installing the version that came with my RV082 router and it didn’t work. Unfortunately, it did do some kind of half-baked install and since Vista couldn’t uninstall it, I had to do manual registry hacks to remove it from the installed programs list. I then installed a newer version of QuickVPN and it still didn’t work. Never had any such problems on XP.

5) Wordperfect 2002 refuses to work with Vista. It seems like it’s working, but when I click File>>Open or File>>Save it immediately locks up. Vista’s compatibility mode (like XP’s) didn’t help.

6) Had difficulty getting my computer to find other computers/resources once I did get a VPN client working.

7) Have had encounters with several strange and cryptic error messages when attempting to accomplish what in XP were mundane tasks like installing printers and searching for computers by IP address.

Not only is Vista fairly incompatible with software from the recent past, it also doesn’t get along all that well with XP. All these incompatibilities would be tolerable if Vista was a quantum leap forward like XP was over previous consumer-grade Windows (95, 98, Me). But it isn’t. It isn’t more stable, it isn’t faster, and it doesn’t allow the user to accomplish new and greater tasks.

Update: 9/8/2007
Three weeks with Vista now, and if usability is the metric, Vista is really bad. I’ve had way too much trouble with many basic tasks. None of my configuration efforts seem to go easy. In particular networking has been a bear. And I’m not writing about just the fact that things are named different and moved around. I’m writing about the fact that nothing seems to work right, easy, well, or consistently. XP was a great release by MS. Vista makes me want to consider other options as my primary OS. It makes me feel taken by MS.

Update: 9/19/08
Another year now and Vista has been improved since then. I’ve especially noticed improvements to the wireless networking. Re-reading my original words, I think the line about it being a “waste of time and money” is a bit harsh. It would’ve been better to state it was “not worth the upgrade.” I still wouldn’t look to buy Vista if I had a fine computer running XP. If I were looking today for a new PC I suppose I would get Vista. Just don’t expect all your old softwares to be compatible.